KOLKATA: “Rigging of polls” refers to illegal or unethical practices intended to manipulate the outcome of an election. This can undermine the fairness, transparency, and legitimacy of the electoral process. While rigging is a fairly well-known activity in all countries and states where elections are held, in West Bengal, it takes on a whole new meaning.
In West Bengal, rigging is an umbrella term for poll improprieties that are done by political parties and is marked by military precision and precise execution.
Vote rigging has a long and inglorious history in West Bengal.
In 1972, the then Siddhartha Shankar Ray and his Congress Party had taken widespread recourse of rigging. But in the next Assembly elections, all such efforts failed as the public anger against the Emergency announced by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, swept the Congress away and brought in the Communists under Jyoti Basu.
For the next 34 years, rigging became an accepted and institutionalised form of hijacking the popular vote. The Left Front parties, especially the big brother CPM, was the pioneer of “scientific rigging”, a term that most people of Bengal know well. The party transcended primitive stuff like “booth capturing”—armed goons taking over polling stations and stuffing ballot boxes with fake votes. This was a form of rigging that could be seen in other states like Bihar as well.
While each successive election saw innovations galore, it is the Trinamool Congress which has elevated rigging to its present form.
In today’s Bengal, rigging encompasses a huge gamut of activities that are done by partymen under the indulgent eyes of the Election Commission, the bureaucracy and the police.
The process to root out non-believers starts early. Months before the polls, people of different political beliefs are quietly identified and surreptitiously their names disappear from the voters’ list.
Tollywood actress and avowed Communist sympathiser, Swastika Mukherjee was left bemused during this Lok Sabha elections when she found her name was not in the voter list of the area in which she has been staying since birth and had voted in all previous elections.
This way, the names of thousands of voters are deleted across the state.
Before the election, in semi-urban and rural areas, the party cadre visit the homes of Opposition supporters and local leaders and politely present widows’ garments to their wives and say: “Didi, you know what will happen to your husband on poll day. So, as your well-wishers, we want to make sure that you have a white saree.” This does the trick in many cases.
The next trick is to enlist the help of government employees to try and ensure that the nominations of prospective candidates are cancelled on myriad grounds.
While this is very common during Panchayat elections, this Lok Sabha elections, the same was used on Debashis Dhar, an IPS officer who had faced the wrath of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and put on compulsory waiting for years. A frustrated Dhar resigned to contest as a BJP candidate from Birbhum. However, the state government did not issue him a “no claims certificate”, which has to be submitted by any government servant, and hence was forced to step down.
Interestingly, the same Election Commission which struck down Dhar’s candidature, had no qualms in allowing Haji Sk. Nurul Islam to contest as the Trinamool Congress candidate from Basirhat against the BJP’s Sandeshkhali protestor Rekha Patra. Islam too had not submitted his “no dues certificate”, but the bureaucrats manning the Election Commission office conveniently overlooked it, says Billwadal Bhattacharya, Debashis Dhar’s advocate, who even approached the Supreme Court for succour but returned empty-handed.
Preparations for D-day start a few days before election day. Bands of enforcers move about threatening supporters of rival parties. A few are beaten up, some bombs are burst to show their area dominance.
Another innovation during the Trinamool rule has been the proactive role played by some police officers.
“Some of the ICs or OCs of the police station call the BJP’s supporters and threaten them with false cases under the Arms Act, the NDPS Act (popularly called Ganja case), or some dacoity case which are all cooked up,” alleges Abhijit Das, better known as Bobby, who contested against the Trinamool Congress scion Abhishek Banerjee. “Many local leaders are picked up and detained inside the police stations to keep them away from political activities,” he added.
The night before the elections, the houses of Opposition supporters are targeted with bombs and Molotov cocktails, or the people bashed up. The idea is to stop people from stepping out to exercise their franchise.
Another innovation that has been introduced is to manipulate postal ballots of officials and policemen on poll duty. Since 2021, office-bearers of the police welfare committee, led by a police officer who famously addressed Mamata Banerjee as Maa, have taken the responsibility of filling and submitting the postal ballots.
Another popular activity is to wine and dine the voters before the elections. Offering money or other incentives to voters in exchange for their vote is a practice by all political parties.
On election day, the next series of manipulations take place.
While the Election Commission mandates the widespread use of CCTV cameras inside the polling booths, these are invariably turned away from the “action”.
In this year’s elections, each Lok Sabha seat had approximately 1,800 booths. The BJP could not place its karyakartas in almost half of them. In contrast, in all booths across the state, the Trinamool Congress, along with the booth agent of the official candidate, had at least two-three booth agents of its dummy candidates who were contesting as Independents. This provided the required muscle-power to drive out the BJP’s agent, if at all there was one. Another way is to try and bribe or intimidate them so that they do not make too much of a fuss when the false votes are actually cast.
Abhijit Das (Bobby), the BJP’s Diamond Harbour candidate who lost to the Trinamool’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee by a record margin of 7.1 lakh votes, told The Sunday Guardian: “The Trinamool goons drove out our agents and indulged in rampant chhappa (false) voting as the polling officers looked the other way.”
Das shared pictures of EVMs in which his party’s symbol had been covered with surgical tape. “Many illiterate voters look for the party’s symbol and vote. If that is covered, they are confused,” he adds.
Rekha Patra, the BJP’s Basirhat candidate, said: “In all the booths I managed to get in, the VVPAT machines were placed outside the EVM and were being monitored by a TMC man. How can any villager vote freely? My protests to polling officers went in vain.”
CPM candidate for Diamond Harbour Pratik ur Rahaman said: “In one booth, a guy who was supposedly the CPM booth agent, could not identify me. When I challenged him and tried to hand him over to the police, he ran away.”
In almost all seats on polling day, Trinamool Congress mobilised its cadre to obstruct the BJP’s candidates from reaching the booths. Almost every BJP candidate faced “go back slogans”, while some, like Dr Pranat Tudu, the Jhargram candidate, had to run for his life after brick-batting injured his security guard.
In many booths, genuine voters are not allowed to vote following vociferous protests by the booth agents. In the next step, while the presiding officer and other poll officials look on, the ruling party’s cadre indulge in mass-voting, popularly known as giving “chhappa votes”.
Innovative tactics were deployed on election day. These methods were used with precision in constituencies where the ruling party has a low probability of winning.
For instance, on election day, as the lines lengthened at the polling stations, a bomb or two would be hurled some distance away, making sure no one was hurt, and panic would be spread—armed mobs are coming, three people have been killed! Many would-be-voters would scurry home.
Then there was “booth jamming”. Party cadre would pack the voting lines early and, through what is known as “time-wasting tactics” in cricket, slow down the process. The queue would grow longer, the sun would get harsher. Non-diehard voters would decide that exercising their democratic right was not worth the effort and go home. Their votes would then be cast by the party cadre.
According to political workers, the next step of rigging takes place inside the vote counting centres.
There, polling officials and counting agents of opposition parties are bought off and then the results are openly manipulated.
“How many poor people can hold on to their honestly in the face of intimidation and allurements?” asks Das.
On 4 June, counting day, BJP’s Abhijit Das even staged a sit-in outside the counting centre, protesting against the alleged high-handedness of the Trinamool’s counting agents. Post-results, a wave of violence has been unleashed on BJP supporters across the state. Many houses have been burnt down, shops looted, ration cards confiscated and thousands had to flee their homes.
“Almost 90 karyakartas are taking shelter in my sister’s house in Amtala,” says BJP’s Abhijit Das, inviting The Sunday Guardian to come and see them.
Rigging elections, from panchayat to Parliament, is something that Bengal can truly teach the rest of India.